Steve Jobs in 1980... and Cloud + Big Data Today

In 1980, Steve Jobs gave a talk (YouTube) about the early days of Apple.

It's fascinating because it describes events that lead up to the first commercially-available Apple computer, and presaged the movement toward "canned" programs (commercial software) rather than everyone writing programs themselves.

However, around the 12:00 mark, Steve made a really incredible observation regarding the true goal of Apple (at the time) and about how to use the new level of computing power available to Apple computer users:

"As we move into the '80's, the amount of computational power - the amount of raw horsepower - we can get into a small box for a reasonable price is staggering....   One of the things people always ask me [is] 'what we've got right now is just fine; VisiCalc runs fast enough. Some of the database stuff runs fast enough. What are we going to do with this extra awesome power?'

"The answer to that is that we're going to put it [computational power] into applying/solving that problem again: In other words, we're going to start chewing up power specifically to help that 1:1 interaction go smoother. And specifically not to actually do the number-crunching and database management and word processing. We're actually going to apply that power specifically into removing that barrier.... 

This statement struck me because, in essence, Steve was saying "it's not about faster, it's about easier". He was pointing to all that could be possible if the clunky interaction with the technology was relegated to the background and made invisible.

In today's enterprise context, my interpretation of this is "What could be possible if all of that data center technology could be relegated to the background and made invisible?" In essence I thought, what if we could mask the granular time-consuming operational efforts of managing servers, I/O, applications, networking, storage, security etc. and get back to why the data center is there in the first place?  Today, IT operations for 'keeping the lights on" consumes ~ 75% of IT's budget today, and only ~ 25% is left over for innovation and serving the business.

The goal of IT Transformation should be to "solve the problem again" and put the computational horsepower on autopilot. Let's get to the point where our interaction with the data center is the ability to ask for the resources we need, and in response, we instantly get fast, scalable, secure services.

If we can get to the point where 25% of the cost is to keep things running, and 75% of the cost is used for innovation about the data, what would be possible for business?

In my opinion, IT is still largely in the Dark Ages. We are obsessed with speeds and feeds, tuning and tiering. The purpose of the Data Center is the Data - manipulating and analyzing it for the business. If we found a way to direct 75% of our computational horsepower to THAT, what would be possible?

That needs to be the goal of IT Transformation. That is why Cloud is such a critical enabler.

Thanks once again, Steve.


Other Resources:

• The Death of Why (Blog by EMC's Bill Schmarzo)

Predictions: What You WON'T See in IT For 2012

While everyone is jumping in with 2012 predictions ('Tis the season) I want to impress on everyone that a dose of sobriety is in order.

IT vendors - and even analysts - are understandably eager to see new technologies and operating models (cloud) adopted quickly. But let's acknowledge the High Tech adage: Not very much happens in 2-3 years, although massive changes occur over a decade.

At any rate, I wanted to highlight things I believe we won't see happen in 2012. Perhaps because we're just being a bit over-eager, or perhaps other enablers have to precede them. Here goes:


An Instant Cloud
Despite claims from vendors, and a plethora of tools and technologies, you still won't see an "instant-on" private cloud solution in 2012. And you probably won't for years to come. I know many folks (mostly vendors) will vehemently disagree with me, but let me challenge you all with this: Cloud is an operational model, enabled by technology. Simply implementing a tool (BTW, most of which are still only tenuously integrated with each other, as well as with hardware and networking platforms) won't solve the problem for you. And definitely not for an enterprise-ready level of availability

Building infrastructure is one thing; knowing how to operationalize it, integrate it into your enterprise, and how to re-structure your service delivery processes are very different. 

However, I do believe that in the next 3 years or so, mainstream enterprises will come to realize that the issue is only partly technology-based. And I hope that change-management and organizational design models will mature to the level of technology models so that "turn-key" process change and skill development will accompany the product sale.

One Dominant Public Cloud
Despite growing use of AWS, Google and Azure, I believe that none of these will be a runaway dominant leader for 2012. Or ever.

Although there will likely be 2-5 very large public cloud leaders who compete on economies-of-scale, I believe the invisible hand of the market will instead cultivate many more "special purpose" community clouds. These players will develop based on knowing their specific market requirements - i.e. competing on security, compliance, use habits, special-purpose applications, performance, etc.  Take for example financial markets (NYSE's Capital Markets Community Platform), Healthcare (varied provider solutions), or even Federal, State, and Local Government (varied initiatives).

The next 2-3 years will definitely see more specific examples of these special-purpose cloud computing initiatives - and perhaps even the emergence of a few 'dominant' community clouds in selected markets. But in 2012, we won't see the community cloud market held back by the presence of large public clouds.

Broad Use of IT Chargeback
Financial chargeback (and showback) have been discussed for years, and are being implemented in greater numbers lately. And although I am a proponent of IT Financial Transparency, we won't see the broad-based use of chargeback unfortunately still won't go mainstream in 2012.

In my opinion, implementing financial transparency tools are second-level initiatives. They don't make sense to implement until and unless the IT department first has other financial controls and metrics in place. And they certainly don't make sense unless IT and the lines-of-business agree on what they're trying to achieve with better IT financial transparency in the first place. Is it really cost-recovery, or merely better knowledge of variable costs and consumption?  Is it an attempt by IT to become more 'competitive' and to measure itself against external providers? Is it an effort by the CIO and CFO to gather better build-vs-buy decisions? The enterprise has to ask these questions before forging ahead with a chargeback program.

So, while 2012 may not be the year of chargeback, it might be the year when IT begins to take a more evolved approach to measuring its variable cost, to metering consumption, and to implementing the goals and strategies it will need to begin these initiatives. Broad-based use of chargeback may still be a few years off, but I hope that IT financial maturity begins soon.

IT is Elevated to a Strategic Business Enabler
Unfortunately, in 2012, we'll still see the vast number of enterprise IT groups continue to report up to the CFO, to be pressured to keep-the-lights-on with less, and to simply be considered a cost center by the organization. As much as IT should be treated as a core enabler of the business, this just won't be so in 2012. It takes time.

But a transformation of IT is taking place, slowly. Saavy CIOs are thinking of themselves as "internal SPs", and beginning to relate to partnering with lines-of-business in a formal manner. To make this transformation, IT first has to adopt new models for services consumption, operations and technology.

In the new context of Business Enabler, IT partners with Lines-of-business to ensure that (a) services are quickly made available to support the top-line revenue needs, (b) IT works with business managers to educate them about potential new services and top-line opportunities, (c) IT adopts a 'consumerized' mindset whereby it supports an "any device" approach to endpoints, and (d) IT is as comfortable with brokering external services as it is with generating its own - doing whatever it takes to support the needs of business users.

But for 2012, let's push IT - and the business - to begin planning for this transformation.

Customers Catch Up to Vendor Vision
As a long-time marketer in high-tech, I've seen the tendency of vendors to push customers to adopt the Next Big Thing. And that N.B.T. is frequently disruptive (or at least discontinuous) with respect to the "legacy" approach to doing things.

To be sure, there are always customers who are leading-edge in their technology adoption. But the mainstream customer adopts technology *incrementally* and rarely if ever discontinuously. This is a byproduct of (a) the human tendency to mitigate risk, and (b) business' tendency to plan change - and budgets - incrementally.

So, for 2012 - and for the foreseeable future -  this trend won't change. Hopefully vendors will be more clear about what's "vision" or what's "for early-adopters", and maintain a healthy dose of sobriety about selling high-brow discontinuity to the mainstream market.

As this relates to Cloud computing, it's clear that more of the mainstream market is adopting virtualization, and has bought into the concept of cloud computing initiatives. But let's be clear: In 2012 the average IT infrastructure won't be completely re-built into a private cloud.  However, I believe that the majority of medium and large IT shops will all have begun their progression toward the private cloud eventuality.


Other (prediction-related) links

• IT's Blind Spots for 2009 (Vol I) Fountainhead Blog
• IT's Blind Spots for 2009 (vol II)  Fountainhead Blog
• Prediction 2009: The Future of Virtualization Fountainhead Blog
• 10 IT Predictions for 2012 Chuck's Blog

Celebrating Innovation at EMC

Can innovation be fostered or facilitated? Can it be measured? Is it a formal or informal process? Can you have an innovation competition? Is it limited to Engineering? 


These were not the topics I was expecting at last week's EMC Innovation Conference. Rather, I thought it was going to be a geek fest with lots of greasy-haired, propeller-hat-wearing attendees drinking diet-Coke and speaking mostly PERL, C++ or Greek.

Instead, the event was attended by a few hundred local Silicon-valley EMC-ers, with hundreds more globally watching simulcast. It was business-casual with execs and technologists alike, and kicked off with none other than EMC's COO Pat Gelsinger (and former Intel CTO) and MC'd by SVP/CTO Jeff Nick. Rather than a siloed techno event, the importance of innovation at EMC was supported at the very highest levels of the company. Now that's refreshing.

Guest stars attended too - one Scott McNealy - in his usual humorous, politically- and sports-charged manner.

But First: Did the COO "Get It"?
Resounding yes on this one. Pat opened with a real command of what innovation means to the company - Innovation can mean disruption... and even destruction of old ideas. And that's good (if you don't agree, read the Innovator's Dilemma). But Pat also pointed out that without being coupled with commercialization/monetization, innovation doesn't count for much. And knowing how to commercialize an innovation can be just as challenging as coming up with the idea in the first place. More on that later.

Pat was also insightful in that innovation isn't just about technology. You can have organizational, marketing, and  process innovation, in addition to product-based innovation. And innovation can be top-down and/or bottom-up (EMC does both).  To help accomplish systematic, company-wide innovation, EMC uses the Golden Triangle: Organic innovation, University research/relations, and EMC Ventures. More on these later, too.

Can Innovation Be Measured?
Both Jeff Nick and Steve Todd (Director of EMC's Innovation Network) focused on this question, and there are many perspectives. Patents, for one, are a useful metric for organic innovation, but as Pat pointed out, they don't necessarily indicate that an idea has been monetized. Nonetheless, there is a rough norm of patents per employee per year that the company is striving towards. Intellectual Property in-and-of itself can be valued, as we've seen from recent acquisitions of IP by IBM, Google, and others.

Jeff also pointed out that another indicator of innovation is of course the monetization itself. What's the ROI on an organic development group? Did an acquisition recoup its cost?  Did a a venture investment create a useful return, or even better, might it have been a profitable acquisition? 

While measuring innovation might still be tricky, knowing how to facilitate indicators gets part-way there.  So when Steve pointed out that another indicator tended to be when small groups work together to solve a problem, there was an "aha" moment.  How to constantly encourage groups to form, and information to flow? Therein lies his "day job"...

Can you Compete for Innovation?
Thus, Steve realized that encouraging groups to form with a common purpose might spur organic innovation. And, for the past few years, he's been conducting an annual innovation contest within and across the company. Participation has been growing at a healthy clip. Topics can be many - some were geeky, but some were clearly for social betterment. 

To his credit, Steve also used a dose of data analytics to map every individual and every project across the company. He confirmed, in fact, that finalists tended to work in groups or "Cliques".Which begged the question, how to facilitate and accelerate this behavior in the future.

Formal or Informal?
The other aspect I really appreciated about the day was the intentional mix of formal and informal innovation the company strives to maintain. As I mentioned, the company emphasizes the concept of the "Golden Triangle". In addition to internal/organic innovation, we also work informally with external universities and research... and of course, formally with many prominent VCs and startups.

Mark Lewis, EMC's Chief Strategy Officer and leader of EMC's Venture group, gave a fantastic overview of how we regularly look at the startup community, and place measured investments with them. The ideas is to discover great ideas both ahead of the competition, and early enough such that we don't have to pay huge premiums to acquire should we deem them valuable.

The strategy behind these investments is broad, but what I heard was a 2-pronged approach:
(a) Pursuing the technologies that are complementary to EMC's product set - technologies and ideas that are net-new to the company, yet extend our leadership in the data center market
(b) Pursuing products that might eventually replace or cannibalize existing EMC products.  Like the Innovator's Dilemma points out, better to cannibalize your own products than have someone else do it for you.

Limited to Engineering?
Capping off was another surprising panel... of marketers. Could Innovation extend into how we market EMC and our products? Absolutely.

Two fascinating points stood out, and hopefully made a huge impression on the audience and EMC as a whole.  First, the panel chosen consisted entirely of recently-acquired marketing leadership located locally in the Bay Area. Scott McNealy had pointed out that "Silicon Valley DNA" was somehow different of that from the rest of the country - and EMC (based in Hopkinton MA) was making a concerted effort to graft that DNA into the rest of the company.

Second, was the attitude of corporate marketing. Do things differently. Use metrics. Understand the trends of the "new" buyers... (Hint: they don't pay attention to marketers using traditional email, snail-mail or traditional TV). Innovation here had to do with how social marketing, new/viral media, and fast-paced imagery was the way to both get attention as well as to change the face of the company brand.

For me, this day definitely served to change how I thought of the CTO's office, how I related to the concept of innovation, and how I think of corporate development.  As EMC further pursues these paths, hopefully other leading companies will as well -- it's good for them, for careers and personal development, and frankly for the economy as a whole.



More Resources
Jeff Nick (CTO): About  Article
Mark Lewis: About  Blog 
Steve Todd:  Twitter: @SteveTodd     Blog: Information Playground
Chuck's Blog: The Challenge Of "Innovating Innovation" In Large Corporations

A Marketing Lesson For IT

In an earlier post of mine, "An Image Makeover for IT" I shared about a surprising meeting I'd had with our IT department -- where they were looking to learn how to better market their services within the company. I felt that this was a harbinger for the "New IT", and I think I was right...

Then last week I was given a draft Data Sheet by EMC's IT department.Whoa, you say. A Data Sheet? Isn't IT supposed to operate down there in the bowels of the data center keeping the "lights on"?

As you know, EMC's IT group has been progressive, from their virtualization initiative to building an internal Private Cloud for the company, to organizing for success, to marketing themselves as if they were a competitive service provider. Which is just the way more IT groups will have to think.

Why would IT Want To Market Themselves?
If IT is to think more "competitively" then they need to organize and act competitively, including driving demand/consumption for their services. This isn't about internal politics (validating their annual budget) but rather about driving awareness, demand, and preference for their services. Because IT's new competition is "shadow IT", the advancing commercialization of IT. More simple-to-use, aggressively priced external services are being offered to users who are accustomed to the convenience.  So IT finds itself having to do the same.

And there is the education component too... because while the enterprise consumer might want to compare internal vs. external services purely based on price (think: AWS, DropBox, MobileMe), IT has to show that there are hidden costs to these: Risk exposure, inability to prove compliance, cost of securing data, etc. etc. So IT turning to traditional marketing devices isn't all that odd in the final analysis.

A Data Sheet for IT...
Back to the Data Sheet I received. The IT dept did their homework - Like all good product marketing summaries, it included components to project leadership and to drive demand:

• Service components: In this case, it is an IaaS style service, replete with the value proposition. It defined the service, the pain-points it alleviates, and why internal EMC engineers should consider using it.
• Overall Value: IT also did a great job of illustrating the *total value* of the service - not just economic value, but the value of agility (time-to-provision) and convenience.
• Value of Risk Avoidance: Some marketers like to market to the paranoid... in this case, IT illustrated the risks of not using an IT-sourced service.Security, compliance, SLAs, etc.
• Competitive comparison: In particular, I like the fact that the internal private-cloud based service full-up cost was compared to that of popular public cloud providers. It illustrated that the actual cost of external services isn't always just the bare-bones hourly cost on your credit card...
• Availability roadmap: I also like the fact that IT set expectations with its customers. What's available now, and what new services/features will be available when.
• And a little bit of Esprit de Corps:Yep, good old pride in what the company is doing, and how the IT department is helping drive the top-line business. 

...And Enabled By New Roles, New Skills
If IT is to succeed as a "competitive" provider to the enterprise, simply publishing a Data Sheet is just one deliverable in a larger story. The organization needs to think, act, and hire like an internal service provider - and ask itself "How do successful SP's drive business demand?"

The process begins with a cultural and leadership shift to a desire to act not as an internal (monopolistic) cost center, and more like a competitive business catering to the varying demands of its internal customers. This is a CIO-level decision, often done in partnership with LoB's and even with the CMO.

And who executes on this new approach? What new functions need to sediment into IT? Well, it's not about technology skills anymore. Rather, IT will need to acquire traditional business and marketing skills. A few suggestions:

• Develop In-bound and out-bound Marketing: This refers to classical Inbound product management (listens externally to customer needs, and helps determine product features, plans, pricing - and classical product marketing, helping drive external awareness, preference and demand. In both cases here, Inbound/outbound functions work as closely with internal lines-of-business to understand their needs, roadmaps and futures.
• Initiate client "relationship management": Somewhat akin to a "sales" function, these individuals are assigned to sit closely-aligned with business users of IT, and work closely with in-bound product management. These folks detect leading indicators  of how IT can better serve the business, and look for ways to add value either with competitive technology, services or analysis.
• Include Pricing and Financial Management: Pricing and costing of services is a shift away from tallying-up gross capital and operational expenses, with a move instead towards activity-based costing. The ability to discern the true usage-based cost of an IT service means that the organization can better align supply with demand, and make better buy-vs-build decisions. This "financial transparency" allows the CIO, CFO, and Lines-of-Business to make better overall decisions regarding using IT to support the enterprise.

If IT is to be competitive, it has to act competitive. Marketing of IT is far from the only shift that needs to be done - and arguably, it probably follows shifts in IT technology and IT operations. But marketing IT is nonetheless an illustrative example of what is to come with a larger IT transformation initiative.

Act Now! Top Opportunities for IT Transformation Services...

It's become obvious of late that cloud computing is not a technology end-in-itself, but rather an enabler of broader IT  transformation. I've heard it from CIOs, CTOs, and even EMC's own IT department. All said, it's clear that IT transformation affects the entire organization - its consumption model, operations, organization, finance and more.It's not just about products anymore.

IMO there is a massive opportunity for leading change-management organizations to work with IT organizations to help them assess and execute this transition. Technology alone will not make IT more competitive.

So I'm a bit shocked that this era isn't a windfall for services providers who will help shepherd IT organizations through the change management process. It should be. To me this seems like thre's a huge investment opportunity to develop service practices. And, it's a huge opportunity for IT organizations to take pause and assess what their structure, operational model and business model will be a few short years from now. And how they plan to get there.

Follows are a few observations - and opportunities - I've made in the hope that a rising tide lifts all ships:

No Show Offs?

Where are the services providers, consultants and change-management professionals at trade events?

Given the tons of IT, cloud, and tech related trade shows, I'm continually amazed at how 99% of floor exhibitors are hardware or software firms. The show managers occasionally include special floor sections for "cloud" or "security" and such, but never for services providers or consultants who would assist the attendees in implementing the technology and change management needed to leverage technology.

I'd like to see an "IT Transformation Services" section in the large shows (i.e. VMworld, Cloud**, etc.) including consultants, organizational design firms, HR firms, IT training and talent management organizations, certification boards. etc. This would be where firms could hawk their services and compete for the non-product enablers for the CIO. Show producers ought to offer incentives to capture these firms and the value they provide.

I'd also like to see more intentionally-produced tracks at the shows that talk about real-world IT transformation successes... without inclusion of product or technology. Topics?  Financial transparency. Organizational design. Service-oriented design. Line-of-business customer focus.

Where Are the Big Guys?

Next, why aren't Accenture, Deloitte, CSC, Cap Gemini, Accenture etc blazing the IT change management trails? Perhaps they have IT change management practices. But I read next-to-nothing from these folks regarding philosophy, approach or successes. I'd like to know more about what they're doing and/or planning.

From where I sit, most System Integrators and management consultants either have 'low-level' practices where they thrown technologists at a problem, or high-level management consultants who produce reports and strategies. I'd like to see the middle-ground, with practices that work with the CIO and their lieutenants, to assess what type of transformation(s) would make the IT organization most valuable to the lines of business.

Where are the books, keynotes, articles and methodologies developed to show-off the IP I *hope* these folks are developing? 

And What of Professional Certifications?

No, not technology certifications; I mean IT Skill certs. Cloud Architect. Cloud Engineer. IT Services/Product Management. IT Marketing (inbound, outbound). IT Business Liaison. IT Financial Services Management. Not all of these are traditional IT roles, but they will be in demand shortly as IT re-tools itself to act and operate as the equivalent of an internal Service Provider.

And while we're at it, I'd *love* to see more business and MBA programs offer technology leadership and change management for CIO's style coursework.  Technology leaders will no longer need to be technologists themselves.


And in closing...

At EMC's recent IT Leadership council, it was clear to attendees that Transformation of the IT org was not about the technology anymore. It was about skills, roles, organizations, culture.

I am continually impressed by what EMC's IT department has done in most if not all of these domains. And I know that our own EMC Consulting arm has deep bench strength in this area. And as a company, we're going so far as to offer professional certifications in these emerging domains.

But as I said above, a rising tide lifts all ships.... I'd like to see broader activity in all of these areas from partners and competitors alike. The best way to make the new cloud computing paradigm successful is to make the IT departments successful in their transition. So, where is the help?

Post-Blog Updates

• Recent announcement from Deloitte for Cloud Service Providers 

IT Leadership: Two Days with Leading CIOs

I'm writing this at Logan airport as I fly home after two full days in Boston, attending EMC’s IT Leadership Council. At it, senior EMC staff were able to spend nearly two full days with a room full of IT leaders from some of the world’s largest and most respected companies.

What made the time unique was the quality of interactions as well as heady topics. EMC’s own leaders and practitioners interacted with our leading customers about  IT Transformation, IT as a Service, managing IT change, and cloud computing futures.  But the conversations were rarely about technology, and did not touch on product at all. Rather, they focused on challenges facing IT today and on IT’s renewed role to support the business.

This was the first time EMC has attempted something so ambitious with such a senior audience. And the results were fantastic -

• For our customers: EMC was able to share our experience in transforming our own IT, helping to validate many of their approaches. Our customers got to interact directly with our internal consultants and practitioners, and exchange views on best practices, pitfalls and works-in-progress.  And I believe we also transformed our customer’s view of EMC's knowledge and capabilities as an enterprise vendor/partner.
• For EMC: We had a unique chance to get out of the “weeds” of technical details, and to focus on the high-level business drivers that are really facing (and affecting) our customers. This was a chance to hear the unfiltered voices of the customers first-hand, for two days. Our thanks to them cannot be overstated.

It’s hard to summarize all of the themes from all of the sessions – including dozens of breakouts on various topics – but follows are my personal takeaways and “high points” from many individual and group conversations:

IT transformation isn’t about technology: Almost everyone was in agreement on this. The technology problems can be solved for. But the real barriers to IT reinventing itself lie in the area of new operational and organizational models, evolving roles and skills, and new financial models. Often-heard was “My technology is ready. My people are not”.

IT leader’s focus: To support business agility: Yes, IT agility and infrastructure agility were still points of conversation. But more important was providing business agility – the ability to help lines-of-business be more productive, more profitable and more competitive. Linking the business case between cloud, IT investment and LoB top-line is becoming an increasingly important strategic conversation for the enterprise.

IT will compete for business: This theme was becoming more prevalent. Users are turning to external service and cloud providers because of pricing and/or convenience. Sometimes termed “shadow IT”, internal IT now has to think of itself as having to “win the business” from lines-of-business. It has to reinvent itself as a competitive internal Service Provider (and/or service broker) to the business. IT is now rarely the only game in town.

Public Cloud isn’t (always) the panacea: There were more than a few customers – mainly banks, government contractors and the like – for whom the public cloud is simply a non-starter, usually due to regulations and compliance needs. But private cloud remained appealing. They were eager to learn more about private clouds and the IT transformation needed to make them productive.

IT must move away from a “hero” culture: IT heroes used to embody all of the organization’s tribal knowledge, and could parachute into a problem and solve it at any time of the day or night. But this SWAT culture has to make way for the “new guard”, consisting of IT staffs trained as generalists, who can work with increasing levels standardization, automation and shared infrastructure. Many practitioners agreed that entirely new staff rewards systems needed to replace those that awarded those with superhero powers.

Marketing? In IT? As IT shifts to becoming an internal service provider that competes for business, it’s also faced with acting like a business unit – replete with marketing functions. And these are skills that are somewhat alien to the organization. They include outbound marketing: publicizing and actively marketing their services to business units to drive demand, and inbound marketing: working alongside customers to identify needs and requirements for future product/service development.

Financial transparency more important than ever: To compete, to forecast, and to model, IT has to know its per-unit costs, whether or not chargeback/showback is implemented.  Knowing capital, operational and incremental costs helps the organization make better buy-versus-build decisions, and allows the rest of the enterprise to make similar decisions about how/where to apply infrastructure. And most important, if/when IT chooses to price services, they do so with detailed information. 
 
Overall, IT is having “new and unfamiliar” conversations: IT is talking with lines-of business regarding business agility. They are learning about inbound and outbound marketing skills. They are discussing competing against consumer service - and/or brokering them. They are being asked to support any and all employee-provided devices. They’re entertaining buy vs. build for application services.  They are being asked to meet or exceed demand for services… rather than to limit them. And they’re shifting from structured data and heavyweight GUIs to unstructured data using throw-away apps.

Much debate was had over whether IT is going through a Transformation or an Evolution. My answer? Evolution takes an awfully long time.

Event Agenda

Practitioner’s View: IT Transformation and GreenPages’ Solutions Architect

Last week I had the chance to speak with EMC Velocity Partner GreenPages – specifically with Trevor Williamson, their director of Solutions Architecture. Trevor regularly speaks with CIO’s from Enterprises and SMBs about cloud computing and IT transformation. He has a refreshingly balanced perspective on technology… and on its impact on business. Follows are some paraphrases from our conversation late last week.

Lots of Talk About Cloud But…

Not surprisingly, Trevor noted that 80% of his customers are talking about cloud computing (who isn’t?) but only really 20% are doing something about it. 

Why: He’s noticed lots of reasons – having to do with resistance to change, the demographics of IT leadership, and more.  Trevor’s analogy was to that of an automobile:  Traditional IT looks like a basic car with a basic engine and basic drive train. Yeah, it basically keeps running for ever. But if you wanted to change something, good luck.  There wasn’t much room for upgrading without changing the whole thing.   Next, enter virtualization… akin to a car with Fuel Injection. It’s an upgrade – and the engine will run more efficiently. But in the very grand scheme of things, it’s still a point-solution (although quite valuable). Now finally, enter the concepts of automation and Cloud Computing: where the car’s components become completely different and independent – no piston engine, an electric drive train, etc.  So it’s much easier to upgrade components without needing to alter others.  Simply increasing the battery gives better range. Changing the electric motors gives better performance. Changing the engine might speed battery recharge.  But components now operate more distinctly and can be optimized independently.

On IT Finance, and Why It Might Be the Key to Change

Trevor also had a terribly pragmatic perspective on a simple but ingrained factor holding-back IT’s efficiency.   In the traditional (read: old) IT financial model, the IT Project Number was the key to all implementations.  Any change to a specific system got charged to that number. And the dollar size of that number got watched under a microscope.  However, bounding the infrastructure’s financial model with a single project number reinforced the technological stove-pipe-ness of the assets themselves. The financial model did not allow for any sharing of assets between systems – because each new asset of course had to be assigned to a single project number. So, one result was the wasteful sizing of each silo - and resulting horrific utilization of each silo.  Ergo, Capital inefficiency became a necessary result of a limited financial model.

Enter: Shared infrastructure that can meter incremental IT usage, and cost-accounting that can keep track of (and assign) incremental costs.  With these two tools, IT could now implement a shared (and, needless to say, virtualized) infrastructure. The improvement in utilization, and resulting improvement in capital efficiency, was and is a boon to IT.

So, Who Calls the Play?

When an IT department decides to go down the path of a private cloud, who makes the call?

Well, there are usually two models Trevor and GreenPages frequently see – either top-down (by decree), or organic (bottoms-up). More often-than-not, Trevor believes most initial deployments are bottoms-up. The typically the initial application is internal to IT, such as QA/Dev/Test – also because these use case customer needs are very dynamic and fast-moving.  Giving the engineers a self-service portal and ability to spin-up tons of cookie-cutter environments is a great fit and a great win.  And doing so internal to IT (in contrast to line-of-business apps) minimizes the number of approvers… also speeding along the project.

Most initial bottoms-up automation and cloud initiatives are relatively new implementations, *not* system refreshes – which surprised me. But for good reason: Refreshes usually involve a cross-application and cross-domain initiative. Which means more approvers and multiple teams.

Now, there are times of course when IT leadership “decrees” building a private cloud – and mostly the impetus is either to reduce costs, or to cater to the LoBs who are looking for agility that will result in making more money.  But when these initiatives are by leadership decree, they’re usually bigger (and slower) than their internal organic cousins.  In fact, the top-down initiatives are usually corporate-scale, even to the point where they’re ‘branded’ and ‘marketed’ cross-org.  But reading between the lines, all of the hoopla doesn’t make the top-down initiatives any faster than the internal approach.

Is building an Internal Cloud Bad (for IT Jobs)?

Trevor gets this question a lot. He’s not yet seen an instance where virtualizing and automating infrastructure has meant a reduction in jobs. Instead, he’s found more the case that it’s good for the *existing* jobs.  Building a private cloud helps IT personnel climb out of day-to-day fray, and frees-up their time for more interesting, higher-value work for the company.   We both noted that IT should be focused on extracting value from company data and partnering with the lines-of-business…. Rather than “keeping the lights on” laboring as a monotonous workhorse.

And Finally…. On Keeping IT Competitive

“Why does business go around IT?” I asked. Trevor was pretty firm on this one: Only when IT can get out of its own way and move at “market speed” will internal customers will choose them. He sees lots of use of external services by lines-of-business, and lots of IT organizations racing to keep up with them.

How to achieve market speed? Part of the answer is re-engineering IT as an internal service provider / service broker. IT must think of itself as a service bureau, right down to marketing its services to users in the enterprise. From an infrastructure perspective, IT also has to become more agile. It has to “stop plugging holes with humans” and start by leveraging automation as part of its DNA. Lots of point systems can be automated, e.g. provisioning OS, virtualization platforms, I/O, networking. And only then can Orchestration be layered across those automated systems to attain the speed and agility needed. Take it a step at a time, with the goal being competitive and customer-focused.